Your IQ Matters Less Than You Think

Nautilus ^ | 4 Oct, 2018 | Dean Keith Simonton

[MtnClimber]

People too often forget that IQ tests haven’t been around that long. Indeed, such psychological measures are only about a century old. Early versions appeared in France with the work of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in 1905. However, these tests didn’t become associated with genius until the measure moved from the Sorbonne in Paris to Stanford University in Northern California. There Professor Lewis M. Terman had it translated from French into English, and then standardized on sufficient numbers of children, to create what became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale....

The result was a group of 1,528 extremely bright boys and girls who averaged around 11 years old. And to say they were “bright” is a very big understatement. Their average IQ was 151, with 77 claiming IQs between 177 and 200....…

The story goes from bad to worse. Of the many rejects—the children with tested IQs not high enough to make it into the Terman sample—at least two attained higher levels of acclaim than those who had the “test smarts” to become Termites. Here are their stories: Luis Walter (Luie) Alvarez was born in San Francisco, just up the peninsula from Stanford. He was around 10 years old when he took Terman’s test but scored too low to enter the sample. The story goes from bad to worse. Of the many rejects—the children with tested IQs not high enough to make it into the Terman sample—at least two attained higher levels of acclaim than those who had the “test smarts” to become Termites. Here are their stories: Luis Walter (Luie) Alvarez was born in San Francisco, just up the peninsula from Stanford. He was around 10 years old when he took Terman’s test but scored too low to enter the sample.

[bytesmith]

Yes, thank you and probably not deserved.

[Larry Lucido]

It depends who's taking the test.